Warren, Blumenthal Question Whether NVIDIA’s $20 Billion Groq Deal is Attempt to Avoid Antitrust Laws
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) opened a new investigation into NVIDIA and pressed its CEO, Jensen Huang, on whether the company’s new deal with Groq, an AI chip startup and competitor, is an attempt to skirt antitrust laws.
“We are concerned that this takeover could stifle competition, further entrenching NVIDIA’s dominance in the AI chip industry and ceding our technological leadership to China,” wrote the senators.
In December, NVIDIA and Groq announced a $20 billion deal — NVIDIA’s largest deal to date. As part of this agreement, NVIDIA obtained a license for Groq’s inference chip design technology and hired many of Groq’s key employees, including its CEO and President. NVIDIA already controlled about 90% of the market for graphic processing units (GPUs), the high-end chips used to develop and deploy AI, but Groq specializes in developing inference chips used to deploy AI models that are more energy-efficient than NVIDIA’s chips, posing a competitive threat.
“In practice, NVIDIA’s acquisition of Groq’s assets allows NVIDIA to consolidate and further entrench its market share,” wrote the lawmakers.
On March 16, NVIDIA announced a new inference processor incorporating Groq’s chip technology, creating a chip so powerful it can speed up AI processing by up to 35 times. Although NVIDIA’s license for Groq’s technology is non-exclusive, its acquisition of Groq’s key employees significantly reduces the value for other companies of licensing this technology as Groq’s pace of innovation and ability to stay at the cutting-edge of chip design will likely decline.
“[B]y licensing its technology and hiring its most important employees, NVIDIA has effectively acquired Groq in all but name,” wrote the lawmakers.
The NVIDIA-Groq deal is the latest example of the growing trend of “reverse acquihiring,” a strategy deployed by Big Tech which involves acquiring control of a company’s key assets without acquiring the company itself. The senators raised concerns that this strategy is designed to skirt the typical antitrust premerger notification and review process.
The senators also highlighted that the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice can still review reverse acquihires for violations of antitrust law. Senators Warren and colleagues urged the agencies to investigate the deal last month.
NVIDIA has a history of engaging in anticompetitive practices which have helped build its market dominance. The Groq agreement is not NVIDIA’s first reverse acquihire: in September 2025, NVIDIA licensed the technology of the chip interconnect startup Enfabrica, which provides integrated systems to more efficiently connect large quantities of AI chips together. NVIDIA has also been the subject of antitrust investigations by the DOJ and governments in the European Union and United Kingdom. In a speech in 2024, Huang bragged that NVIDIA’s “total cost of ownership is so good that even when the competitor’s chips are free, it’s not cheap enough.”
The competitive implications of NVIDIA’s agreement with Groq have already begun to impact the AI industry. OpenAI was reportedly considering Groq’s chips as a more efficient alternative to NVIDIA’s offerings for certain types of inference tasks, but talks between OpenAI and Groq were “shut down” after NVIDIA’s licensing deal was announced. As a result, OpenAI agreed to purchase even more chips from NVIDIA.
The senators also raised concerns that NVIDIA’s practices undermine the ability of U.S. companies to innovate and compete with China.
“By further consolidating NVIDIA’s control over the AI chip industry, the Groq deal limits consumer choice and innovation, which will ultimately raise prices and threaten domestic firms’ ability to compete with China,” the lawmakers concluded.
The senators pressed Huang to explain the structure of NVIDIA’s deal with Groq and whether it is an attempt to avoid antitrust scrutiny by April 3, 2026.
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